WASHINGTON TIMES — The Zika virus is raising alarms. It can cause serious neurological complications for women and babies, and microcephaly in newborns: smaller than normal heads and brains, and severe debilities requiring expensive care throughout a person’s life.

Although Zika can be transmitted via sexual contact, its primary carrier is Aedes aegypti. Known as the Yellow Fever mosquito, this flying killer has rebounded from near eradication in the 1960s to being a dangerous scourge in Brazil, other South and Central American countries, Puerto Rico, Caribbean islands, Africa and Asia.

Found in Hawaii and some southern U.S. states and European nations, as well, they also carry other dangerous diseases. Yellow fever causes fevers, chills, nausea, muscle pains, and liver and kidney damage when these symptoms recur. A vaccine exists, but it still kills up to 30,000 people annually.